Writers Institute looks to 30th year
Robert Boyers and Peg O'Higgins Boyers
Five nights a week during July, Skidmore Professor Robert Boyers sets the table in
his home for an extraordinary dinner party, as he and his wife host literary luminaries
in town for the New York State Summer Writers Institute held on the Skidmore campus.
Now in its 30th year, the institute draws a distinguished roster of writers as its
teaching faculty, among them institute founder and Pulitzer winner William Kennedy,
as well as Pulitzer honorees Jorie Graham, Carl Dennis, Charles Simic and Louise Gluck;
prolific novelists Francine Prose, Russell Banks and Jamaica Kincaid; National Book
Award winner Joyce Carol Oates; New York State Author Mary Gordon; and former U.S.
Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky. In 2016 Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland: A Memoir,
which made the best-of-2015 lists of the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles
Times, will be part of the program.
In directing the summer institutes (and hosting their faculty), Boyers has fostered
an intimate community of writers who are passionate about the program. And it shows
in the enthusiasm and quality of students, many of whom are many-year regulars at
the intensive month-long workshops in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Often, evolving
writers in the student ranks are "discovered" by publishers through institute connections;
alumni include Pulitzer winner Paul Harding and acclaimed novelists Garth Greenwell,
Helen Ross and Cristina Garcia.
Under the joint auspices of Skidmore's Special Programs and the New York State Writers
Institute at the University of Albany, the institute is "indisputably a great miracle,
a great vision," says Boyers, now in his 47th year at Skidmore. "We have been able
to attract the best writers and the best students from far and wide. It is very well
known because of the caliber of the visiting writers and because we do well by students."
His colleague-wife, Peg O'Higgins Boyers '75, has attended for 18 summers and has
published three books.
When Kennedy chose Skidmore to establish the program, he cited the vibrancy of Saratoga
Springs as a factor. But time downtown may be only a minor draw. Boyers says most
attendees live on campus and "immerse themselves in…writing and attending readings
for the weeks they are with us. They find it life-changing. They can conceive their
work at the institute and get feedback from exceptional writers as well as each other."
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